Irk - Notes

Restrictions

Line continuations are permitted (ignored) in preprocessor directive lines
Line continuations in string literals may be configured to:
- Be permitted (ignored)
- Generate warnings
- Generate errors
- Be automatically changed to a sequence of implicitly concatenated string literals
Line continuations in code may be configured to:
- Generate errors
- Be automatically removed
Line continuations in comments:
- Are permitted (ignored) if the following line is a comment line or a blank line
- Generate an error otherwise

Preprocessor directives are left unchanged in formatting
Each code alternative bracketed by
#ifdef ... [ #elseif ...] [ #else ...] #endif
is formatted as though that alternative were the only one present. Because of a reliance on the presence of matching parentheses/braces in formatting the code (see the point below), code alternatives which leave the program parse in different block-nesting levels have to be adjusted (see contrived example below)
Because a full semantic analysis of code is beyond the scope of this formatting tool - it's (a) too hard (b) requires access to files beyond the source file being formatted and (c) too hard - heuristics are used to format code. One of the main cues used is the presence of punctuation characters - particularly semicolons and matching pairs of parentheses and braces ('curly-brackets'). Macros which contain 'dangling' punctuation can confuse or be rejected by the formatter. For example, the Pascal die-hard's use of:
#define begin { #define end }
will cause much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Examples of things which won't work	Examples of things which will work
`#define openParen ( #define closeParen )`// No apparent match for open-parenthesis after 'bar'`void bar ( closeParen { }`// Not recognised as a function`void foo openParen closeParen { }`	`#ifdef foo int bar(int a, int b) #else double bar(double a, double b) #endif { return 0; }`
// This example is very contrived. Both the // "won't work" and "will work" versions are // ugly and verge on the unreadable `void foo() { #ifdef PLATFORM1 if (platform1_specific_cond) { #else` // some other code without a {`#endif call_some_func(); #ifdef PLATFORM1 } #else` // some other code without a }`#endif }`	// This example is very contrived. Both the // "won't work" and "will work" versions are // ugly and verge on the unreadable `void foo() { #ifdef PLATFORM1 if (platform1_specific_cond) { #else` // some other code `{ #endif call_some_func(); #ifdef PLATFORM1 } #else` // some other code `} #endif }`

K&R-style parameter declarations aren't supported because

	This page last changed: 17 Sep 1999
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